


The Whispers of Stars

by oponn



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Chat, Leave My Jedi Alone, Other, That's Not How The Force Works, mother-son bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 07:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16990881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oponn/pseuds/oponn
Summary: Leia Organa discovers Kylo Ren's deepest, darkest secret and is given the first opportunity to meet and treat with the new Supreme Leader since Luke Skywalker's death.





	The Whispers of Stars

Bright.  

A momentary line appeared between the elegant eyebrows of Leia Organa Solo as she exhaled gently, closing her eyes and smoothing her veined hands over the mossy parapet of the balcony. Felucia had no moon – no light from the native sun made the planet's surface after dusk without it and Leia was often treated to a breathtaking view. This night bore no exception and upon exiting onto the balcony Leia had stopped with a gasp, beholden to the sight. 

The base had existed in this mountain, built down like an insipid anthill, since there were Separatists trying to colonize a war movement in 21BBY. It overlooked a vast valley that during the day was a riot of colourful plants and tangled canopies with thick clouds of mist scuttling over the top of the jungle.  

At night, it was a sea of impenetrable darkness punctuated with the soft glow of the dark blue stripes on trees and the gentle purple of the man-sized mushrooms throwing warm, content colour in small circles under their umbrellas. The plants didn't emit enough light to do anything but appear in the black and the night ran completely rampant when left unchallenged.  

The real deal was the stars – the night sky was two inches from her face. It felt like she was looking out a ship window, so tangible and twinkling they were. The eyes would focus on one and then noticed the others and by the time a person was done gawking, they'd easily quadrupled in their numbers.  

Winking sapphire oceans.    
Twinkling white deserts.    
Arid yellow dust balls.  

They hung in the sky all around her, sparkling and vying for her attention, whispers from thousands of lightyears away in both time and space. They were so bright in the darkness, stark and vivid against the adamant nothingness. Closing her eyes, Leia slipped into the Force like she would slip beneath the surface of her bathwater – enjoying warmth, contentment, familiarity.  

Once she had waded into the currents, it was painfully bright. Opening yourself was like shining a light into the universe and having every other light that was on shine back at you. It was a dazzling array of colours and feelings, whispers and licks of personality. Everyone had their own signature, their own particular Force thumbprint, that came eventually like a scent and Leia's sensitivities had always laid in finding those threads and pulling on them.  

She kept tabs on certain signatures, people who were important to her, like a spider on a web. She often plucked at the gossamer threads of the Force, following their silken strands with vigor and precision just as Luke had taught her once upon a time. Even as she did it, a smile appeared on her lips as she could almost feel Luke's presence in her mind. He was always wordless but his signature was there, reassuring and amused, quietly walking the halls of her mental palace with her.  

Leia spread her awareness by taking a deep breath of the humid air around her - focusing on the signatures familiar, starting with the farthest. Her fiercely loyal and dogged pilot, Poe Dameron, was a faint glimmer himself and even fainter so far away. An important assignment and so far he wasn't dead, her main anxiety. Often, she pondered his persisting personal importance to her especially in the face of his brash temper tantrums. She had recently come to the begrudging realization it was more likely because Dameron was more what she'd expected Ben – _Kylo_ _Ren_ \- to turn into.  

Unfortunately, the boy she'd sung to sleep during the setting of the second sun in Hanna City was way more than just a temperamental and exquisitely talented pilot. If only life were so simple and children only took after one of their parents.  

Ben had been something else even before he was born. Leia had been very anxious and uncomfortable while pregnant. Entering or exiting an atmosphere was guaranteed to make her throw up everytime and by her second trimester she was required to remain planetside on threat of bedrest. The entire time she'd been trapped in a set of hauntingly elegant chambers that she'd wound up pacing through, ridiculous gauzy trimming on her nightgown's hem and cuffs trailing after her. She and Han had had a particularly loud argument about how she wasn't her mother and refused to kept in a gilded cage until she delivered.  

That was the first night she felt him.  

At first, she hadn't known. To be quite honest, she'd thought the sensation was just a side effect of another major organ getting kicked around and she'd sat heavily, hands braced on the swell of her stomach as she breathed through it. Han swept in, a ruffled bird, taking the air from her space and she'd snapped at him. They yelled.   

The sensation worsened and through a staggered cry she'd realized why the feeling almost crushed her body to the floor – she was feeling fear, but not her own. Reactionary fear to a loud noise, static confusion. Nothing but faint shades of red and copper, deep and shallow at the same time. The height of sheer awareness finding hers and blending together as one, as they were meant to be and then she recognized what she was feeling.  

Han had held her as she sobbed and held her longer when she told him they were having a son.  

As a child, Ben had been a veritable wall of Force energy. Accidents, temper tantrums, moodiness and abrupt changes in his schedule had often resulted in some sort of punishment for the surrounding architecture. It scared Leia out of her mind and Han off the planet, which only made Ben's rages more heartfelt and anguished over time.  

Her son was 6 when he'd leveled her with a furious glare and slammed the first mental wall between the two of them up. That wall had never come down. Leia had cried to Luke about it for months and his reassurances that this was all natural grew more strained and less confident as time passed.  

When Ben had left for good he'd shrugged Luke's reassuring hand off his shoulder and boarded the ship with a straight spine and stiff shoulders that were quickly widening with age. Lanky and intimidating, Ben was reclusive and resentful of his new living situation but unable to do anything about it. Leia had waved the entire time the ship had taken off, trying not to make it look apologetic. Ben had neither looked back nor looked through a window. He'd just gone. 

 She knew as the sun had glinted off the hull of their retreating ship that something had shifted irreparably. Her only solace was that even through all of this, his signature had stayed the same. As with every person, shadows and claws pull at the edges but her son was unstained and strong.  

With a flippant hope, Leia cast outwards and felt for the fronds of Force that she knew were her son. She hadn't done this since before Han had died, too angry and scarred. Too destroyed and heartbroken. Although her spine was dipped in steel, there was such a thing as metal fatigue and losing the love of her life had nearly snapped her in half.  

It came easily, like the heat of the sun finding skin on a hot day. The familiar shades of Ben were blunted and smudged with a cloying darkness but still the same morphing and inscrutable signature she'd ever felt. It always felt as if he were constantly in crisis - a shifting shadow of anguish, grief, rage and loneliness. Sharp pangs of red venom and maliciousness were what she expected and instead she found that he was unmovable shades of exhausted, guilty and ashamed. She frowned with how readily this information came, a bubbling geyser of agony that was unshielded and raw and... Leia's eyes snapped open.  

 _Here_.  

She was gone from the balcony before the thought had fully gone through her head, her body feeling as if it had been simultaneously dunked in both ice and fire. Her blood pounded through her veins at a high boil as she fled through the darkened halls, frantically entering codes and swiping the access chip in her wrist as she progressed.  

There was no mistaking it, the largeness of his self so loud and blatant. It was similar to the noise in the Force that Luke generated but Ben's had gotten much more sinister with the swirling spots of darkness that she felt eating holes in his chest. He was distracted, utterly consumed with his goal and fear tore its way through her throat as she entered Hangar B.  

Another ghost she'd been avoiding hulked in the corner of the bay with its entry ramp descended and a pilot light operational on the end of one of the tractor beam projectors. Leia fled toward it with loud footsteps and a note of hysteria tinting her thoughts. His signature was booming through the Force around her right now, razor sharp and focused.  

She withdrew her oldschool DT12 blaster pistol, furtively glancing around for anything out of the ordinary. The hangar was silent and yielded no white bucket heads so Leia took two hesitant steps and then charged on board the _Millennium Falcon_. She made short work, knowing these darkened passages like she knew the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. When she reached the lounge, it was still lit by a long-time frozen game of Dejarik and she stepped in, leveling the end of her gun and her mouth dropping open slightly.  

She knew Rey had taken to sleeping on Han's old ship for various reasons many people attributed to her simply being a Jedi and needing mystical Jedi space but Leia knew better than that. She knew after years of sleeping beside Han and waking to find him sleeping in places like hallways and sitting against walls. After so many years of hardship, the semblance of the smallest luxuries could be suffocating. Rey was like Han – much had happened to her and she was shaped by it just as much as she was haunted by it.  

Unlike Han, Rey seemed to do better alone despite readily making attachments to people around her. She housed a deep and endless loneliness that Leia had somehow recognized from outside herself until this very moment. Everything crystalized into understanding.  

Rey had made a nest of tattered blankets, a spill of some very old books she'd produced from one of the _Falcon_ 's hidey-holes on the ground beside what appeared to be a balled-up jacket for a pillow. She was asleep, face relaxed in the dim light cast by the projection. The delicate curve of her nose cast a long shadow over her relaxed features.  

It was the fact that Leia's own son, the Supreme Leader of the First Order and First Knight of Ren, was curled around the girl's sleeping form like the hard, protective crust of a planet and when Leia had entered the cabin, his head had snapped up and met her eyes.  

The moment stretched for an eternity between heartbeats but Leia saw it all – the shock quickly fading into an ugly expression of insolence and possession. He tightened an arm Leia only just noticed wrapped around Rey's waist, pulling her closer to him as if he were clutching a beloved toy someone was going to confiscate. It was the same expression he'd worn when Leia _had_ confiscated toys as punishment for his misdeeds. Then the childlike stubbornness was swallowed by a far more predatory, dangerous expression just as Leia's gun arm lowered cautiously.  

He moved quickly, putting two fingers within inches of Rey's temple and causing Leia to shake her head twice desperately. She tilted the blaster, hooking the trigger loop around a finger so it swung limply and showed him her palms as she slowly put the weapon on the edge of the game table.  

The sound of the metal being put on the tabletop caused Rey's forehead to scrunch and she moved, rousing slightly. His fingers descended, touching her temple and rendering Rey's face suddenly slack as Leia gasped, " _No!_ "  

He rose as soon as Rey's form on the floor was limp and he seemed to fill the small space. He was staring at Leia just as she was staring at him, albeit with a modicum more scorn and hatred on his face. Leia's breath came in short, slightly panicked gasps that she was doing her best to ease.  

He moved towards her suddenly and she stepped back, bumping into the wall behind her and that seemed to give him pause. His chin tremored briefly as he looked over her face, the hatred melting away into an expression of longing and regret. It was Han's face, the same face he made when he made a mistake he knew there was no fixing.  

It was the hatred Han carried for himself and everything he'd failed to do that Leia saw echoed on her own grown son's face and it made her chest knit together.  

Then his arm shot out, impossibly long and black, and Leia barely jerked her head back before his fingers touched her temple as well. A violently disorienting sensation pulled on Leia's being as the world around her fell away, swam and then reoriented itself.  

The room she was now in pieced itself together like the opening of slanted blinds and Leia tried not to snap her heard around as she took in the black, polished chamber. It was a cavernous room that boasted nothing but a grandiose round conference table attended by wicked looking black chairs. The polished black tiles travelled up the walls and traversed the ceiling. A floor to ceiling windowport hogged the wall to her right, illuminating the room with the blue lines of hyperspace travel.  

Leia faced the man with her, standing in front of the glass looking out with his hands clasped tensely behind his back. Imperial, commanding. Everything Darth Vader wanted from Luke.    

"I don't suppose it was hyper-rapture that caused your madness instead of Snoke," Leia commented finally, having found her voice after a dazzling series of seconds. Her brain was still working out exactly what transpired. The Force worked in mysterious ways but Leia knew for a fact that teleportation was a limited power to begin with. This was something else.  

"Would that be easier for you to swallow? Your son went insane instead of murdering your husband of his own free will?" Kylo Ren replied in the same voice that had belonged to Ben Solo. Leia refused to close her eyes against the words he so casually said. She was not going to have this discussion with him or she would descend into anger and Luke had always been adamant that the way through to her son was through calm understanding.  

"What are you doing with Rey?" Leia asked pointedly, as if it hadn't shocked her to her core.  

"What are _you_ doing with her?"  

"Giving her shelter. Friends. Protection. Purpose," Leia replied calmly as she approached one of the chairs at the head of the table and gracefully sat herself. Feet away, Kylo Ren had not turned around and remained entranced by the churning patterns of hyper light. He laughed bitterly and Leia found herself folding her hands together and placing them on the tabletop patiently. It stopped her from clenching and unclenching her fists.  

"Protection," He muttered and Leia quirked an eyebrow at the derision in his tone. He finally turned around, long face pinched in anger and colour suffusing his cheeks.  

"Protection from who? Me? Your _monster_ son?" He snarled and his anger flowed through the room like a wave that Leia endured, letting it wash over her harmlessly.  

"Protection from the Supreme Leader who wants to use her the way he was used," Leia said flatly and braced herself for his onslaught. None came and she glanced at him, finding him glaring at her and taking huge, heaving breaths that caused his shoulders to hitch with the effort.  

"Snoke showed me my path to true power," He retorted raggedly and Leia didn't bother disguising the roll of her eyes as she glanced around the room.  

"Snoke used you like you were a Bantha. You could have had yourself a fancy conference room on a diplomat's ship if this is truly what you were after," She observed dryly and gestured around her. He laughed the same hollow, mocking laugh that Han used to let out when she'd meted out a nerve. Then he approached the conference table to stand between two chairs and rest his knuckles on the tabletop. He leaned into them, causing them to whiten as he canted towards her to spit venom.  

"It doesn't matter what you think, General. You say you're giving her protection when she's been the one protecting you and your pathetic attempts to revive what bloody scraps of the Resistance you can put on life support," Ren said scathingly and Leia inhaled slowly to the top of her breath as she kept her expression painfully neutral during his tirade.  

"She doesn't know anything that would be of use to you. Her power is her own and you'd be better off letting her figure that out," Leia interjected primly and ignored the wild rage that flit across his features at the suggestion.  

"The problem is she's aware of what she doesn't know. You don't even know what it is she doesn't know and she tries her best to not know it. After all, I didn't know for sure the Resistance was still trying, I didn't know she wasn't lost in grief, I didn't know she wasn't hiding in a mechanic's bay on the Outer Rim until you walked in," Ren ranted at her, his deluge ending with a sickly triumphant note and a horrible smile bleeding across his features. 

Leia's heart sank in her chest.  

"Now I know why she's on the Falcon, now I know she's close to you. Look at you, in sleeping clothes while she was asleep? Obviously, you're not on shifted cycles which means you're planetside somewhere," Ren postulated as he pushed away from the table to make a show of walking up and down in mock thought. Leia's jaw tightened with annoyance that he was still as perceptive as Han had always been and had all of her cockiness about it. She was mad that she'd been the one to hand this information over to him.  

"Obviously, you can't see anything not immediately around her or you'd have explored thoroughly," Leia cut him off without any added heat even though the urge to smack him right in his smug mouth was crawling up the back of her neck. She looked at him sharply, interrupted in his little game and went in for the kill.  

"Obviously, you weren't really there and I'm not really here. _Obviously_ , she wants nothing to do with you because you can only visit her when she's asleep," She finished with a wan smile and took the moment to smooth the material on her lap and then gently re-lay her hands on the shiny desktop. Her fingers left no marks on the impossibly glossy surface. She wasn't really here.  

She sighed as she looked around again, knowing full well where he got his flair for drama from. She'd worn those buns for a reason.  

Leia's brain was working overtime, piecing together what she was learning as she was learning it. Thinking on her feet had been a skill she'd spent a lifetime developing and thankfully it hadn't gotten rusty in her years of political finagling. Small details were coming forth, details from battles long past and discussion held not so long ago with Luke.  

" _How did I hear you down there?_ " She'd asked him. Luke had sighed and given her his best guess. 

"You don't know anything," Kylo Ren growled at her and she was surprised to see he looked sad for a moment. A flash of loneliness and stubborn anger. It suddenly made so much sense as to why Rey stayed by herself, why she trained by herself, why even in moments where her face was carefree and unlined she looked wary. Why Luke's death had made her into a tired shadow of the man.  

"Luke was bonded too, you know. I'm sure he never told you, but he fell in love with her. Might be another Skywalker curse," She told him gently and offered him a tight, apologetic smile. He gave her an ugly look, torn between revulsion and dismissal.  

"Her name was Jem. She was from Ossus," Leia added on as an afterthought and Kylo Ren buried his face in his hands and clutched his head in frustration before pushing away from his spot and going back to the window to stare out. His hair was mussed where he'd raked his fingers through it.  

"That's a lovely tale but _Snoke_ did this to us. The Force is not working in a mysterious way. My former master stuck a Jedi ten years my junior _in my head_ ," Ren seethed from his spot looking out into hyperspace. Leia resisted drumming her fingers on the wood.  

"Is that where you're hurtling to? To kill Rey and myself?" She intoned with boredom and he heaved another heavy, disgusted sigh.  

"I have better things to do than further concern myself with the dregs of a dead movement."  

"Seemed very invested in cuddling my Jedi," Leia commented and flinched when he slammed his fist into the window he was looking out. It remained uncracked but the impact was loud enough that it echoed in the cavernous room.  

She glared at his back, heart skittering nervously in her chest. This was the same fear she'd felt when he had blasted a door and part of the wall out of the kitchen when he was hitting puberty. This was the same fear she'd felt when he'd force-pushed Han off the second-floor landing onto the tile of the atrium below at 8 years old. It wasn't the Force in him that scared her, it was how his anger let the Force out of him. With how often in her life she'd felt like she was going to explode and kill everyone around her, she was conscious of the possibility of that being a reality for her son.   

Clucking her tongue, Leia rose from the chair and moved to stand in the middle of the room.  

"If we're of no concern to you, leave Rey alone." 

"I _can't_."  

"Can't or won't?" Leia demanded and watched his shoulders tighten slightly. She wondered briefly if this was it – if he'd had the chance to be a man or if he'd thrown himself into Snoke and now didn't know how to be anything but manic about what he wants. Manic about things he _loves_.  

"If you love her, you'll let her be."  

"She's _in my head_. I hear her every time she curses at me about FN-2187. I hear every time she cries over Luke. I have to listen to her screaming and calling me a monster over a man that _she didn't even know_!" He raged and punched the glass again. Leia eyed it nervously and smothered the urge to tell him to have more common sense.  

"Your Father loved you," she whispered at him and he whirled on her, his face contorted into pure rage.  

" _I KNOW THAT!_ "  

They watched each other, Leia with a tremulously serene expression and Kylo Ren vibrating with fury. His eyes spat sparks at her as he raised a hand, holding her to a single accusatory finger.  

"You should know out of anyone that love is the most destructive emotion," He said evenly and Leia thinned her lips at the implication. He blanched at himself before continuing in a shaking voice.  

"It makes you _weak_. It makes people think they have _power_ over you."  

"If you think loneliness makes you strong, why is exile a punishment?"  

"Then why did you want me to live the life of a Jedi?" He snarled at her and Leia was doused in surprise, her mouth falling open slightly. The starkest of confusions coloured her world and she sputtered over her words.  

"I _never_ wanted the life of a Jedi for you!"  

"YOU LIE! You sent me away to start training with _him_ when I was still a boy!"  

"I wanted you to have _control_! Your ability in the Force was stronger than you. Every time you hurt someone I watched it eat at you!"  

"You were afraid of me."  

"You were afraid of yourself. You stopped having friends, you stopped playing. You did nothing but read textbooks and talk about the Jedi Order. Then you had questions..." She trailed off helplessly, remembering the horror of her young child asking her why she'd never mentioned the Sith Lord Darth Vader to him.  

"You couldn't wait to get rid of me and what I represented."  

"I couldn't believe that I had ignored my gut about the Skywalker legacy and I'd spread this so-called _gift_ to my son. That I'd created something that only talked about the acquisition of power."  

"You gave me a name that spoke of _generations_ of power. You can't give a _title_ and not expect someone to wear it," He spat back at her and Leia felt like she'd been slapped. Her cheeks stung with anger and her mouth filled with vitriol she longed to sling at him – for the pain and anger and fear and exhaustion. How he doesn't get to stab Han with a lightsaber and pretend to be the victim.  

"I'd give anything to have Ben Solo back," She finally said and crossed her arms over her chest, hand coming to rest on her collarbones in case she needed to cover her quivering mouth. The precipice of tears choked her and she struggled to bury it, along with the gush of anguish over the truth of the matter. Ben Solo did not exist inside of Kylo Ren. He stared down at her, sooty black eyes cold and unfeeling. 

"He died with Han."  

With that, he tightened his jaw and brushed past her just as the space around her bent, warped and morphed. Leia stumbled slightly and bumped into the storage lockers lining the far wall of the _Falcon_ 's lounge area and looked around in mild confusion, carefully checking her awareness for any sign of Kylo Ren.  

Nothing.  

His signature was faint and furious. The space between them, so easily stretched and changed, had snapped back into place and Leia's ears seemed to ring with the echo of the Force. The _Falcon_ was still silent and mostly darkened, although the morning ambient lights were starting to glow.  

Rey stirred on the floor, effects of her Forced slumber starting to peel away.   

Leia picked up and pocketed her blaster before smoothing her hands over herself and taking a quick, calming breath. She debated running, going back to her rooms and sitting on her bed and letting her brain chew on everything that had just transpired.  

She took one look at the brunette girl on the floor and sighed to herself.  

While it was valiant, trying to live life with Kylo Ren in your head was bound to open up a world of problems and Leia wanted to get ahead of it. She wanted to lift one curse from this girl, this child that everything had made so crucial, just make one thing better and if anyone knew the monster storming through space in a metal mask, it was Leia.  

She was positive now, as much as it hurt her to admit, that he would eventually try to kill Rey again too. The only person who could stand to be loved by Kylo Ren and survive would be this desert hardened scavenger girl and Leia's heart broke for what a tragic position that was to be in.  

Leia shuffled down to the galley, got two cups of hot water and activated caf and returned. She sat, crossed her legs and doctored her beverage mechanically. By the time she was done, the girl had woken and sat up completely. Her face had gotten paler and she was trying to furtively look around the entire cabin without craning her head.  

Leia gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile and turned off the projection as Rey slowly got to her feet. She looked like a lothcat that had accidentally climbed a tree. 

"I think," Leia said as she slid the second cup across the table, "it's time we talk about Force Bonds."  

After an endless, frozen moment Rey sat heavily across from her. A tremulous smile bled across her face under brown eyes that had welled with tears. She hastily wiped the shining wetness from her eyes with her sleeve. 

"I'm sorry, I just. You just reminded me so strongly of him for a moment."  

Leia frowned. 

"Ben?"  

"No. Luke," Rey said quietly, attempting a small smile. Leia's heart warmed and she smiled, almost feeling a faint whisper around her. Laughter? A joke, probably. He would have made a joke. 

"If my jokes get as bad, just space me," Leia sighed with a barely serious face before reaching across the table and gently touching the girl’s freckled skin. High cheekbones, refined nose and brown eyes that search for justice for all. Leia had seen photos and watched holos of her mother that had hallmarked her life.  

"When you get as old as I have lived to be you see the same eyes in different people," she said gently and smoothed a hand over the shiny brown hair she'd seen her son so lovingly nuzzling. Rey's pupils dilated and her mouth opened slightly.  

"I've heard that before."  

Leia sat back and nodded, folding her hands back around her small standard issue mug.  

"What do you mean by it?"  

Leia frowned as she mulled it over – the thoughts were mostly murk, like fish flipping to the surface only to dive out of sight again. There was a lot to think over and little time, so she skipped to the big concept.  

"Ben's obsession with Darth Vader has always been a quest for power. Anakin Skywalker had the love of my mother and it was the threat of losing her that turned him to the Dark Side. Through that, he found unimaginable power. Kylo Ren sees love as a destructive weakness, something to be killed to eliminate an emotional threat and believes this was Vader's path to greatness," Leia explained to a patient Rey, who undoubtedly knew the majority of this but nodded along with her words nonetheless. Leia shook her head, searching her thoughts and turning her words over like stones.  

"Ben has always been special. He's always been strong in the Force. _So_ strong as a child. He was born with power that Anakin hadn't tasted until he was training with real Jedi. And _you,_ surviving on that planet? From that age? Feats you probably didn't realize were the Force. Ben thinks he can make himself like Vader was at the height of his power but he's already there. They're _opposites_ , fundamentally so." 

Rey's eyebrows came together and her face slowly scrunched as she digested this information but Leia had already seized upon the idea and was reeling it in.  

"Vader had love and sought power. Ben has the power and seeks love, he just thinks it's power. He's just been manipulated into killing... _Han_ ," Her voice wavered dangerously, "As a way of ensuring he couldn't ever turn back. The way Vader would never be Anakin after Padme. You're all that's left and I worry that for him, power may beget love. The ultimate target."  

They sat in silence for some long moments, both trapped in their own minds that were sloshing with various ideas and emotions. Rey took a big breath. 

"I think that's what Luke was trying to tell me the entire time," She admitted miserably and Leia reached across the table and covered her hand consolingly.  

"I'm worried for you," Leia sighed honestly and Rey added her other hand to the pile and gave her an earnest look, brown eyes sparkling with determination.  

"Luke always said that Vader was always Anakin. He died for that reason, because he couldn't let his son die. That last little bit of her, your mother, he came back for." 

"Don't put that on yourself, Rey."  

"Do you think Ben is still in there?"  

Leia thought about him, on that ship in that massive cold conference room. He'd wanted to show her how impersonal everything was. Alienate who she was to him by providing a business setting. How she knew in her heart of hearts the shot that blew out her ship hadn't come from his cruiser. How tenderly he'd curled around the girl in front of her, his arm holding her body to him as he steals contact.  

Steals affection.  

She'd seen him at one of his rawest moments and she'd seen her son. She was wrong; Ben Solo lived.  

"Yes," she intoned quietly.   

Rey lifted her eyebrows, ducking her head down to look into Leia's tired face and she squeezed her hands. She said the words Leia knew were both going to be the root of her heroism and also all her pain. 

"Then I have to try." 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this started as a tumblr prompt by a blog that apparently didn't make it through the purge. the prompt was; "Leia goes to see Rey and finds her asleep in her bunk with her son snuggled up behind her and his arm wrapped around her" and this is what I wound up with. if you know which blog it is please let me know so I can link it. 
> 
> figured i'd post it here instead of letting it rot in my scratch files but I'm aware the ending is adrupt and weak and no, I don't have any plans to continue it. 
> 
> thanks for reading, leave me your thoughts and know i appreciate you.


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